ave nothing but battle, murder, and sudden death. These
become positively monotonous in the pertinacity of their repetition. Of
course one may argue that adventurous persons expose themselves to an
uncommon number of dangers, and consequently pay an uncommon number of
forfeits. I dare say that is the reasonable explanation. Only the
persistence of the thing gets hold of one rather. The manner of their
dying is very varied, yet there are two constant quantities in each
successive narrative, namely, violence and comparative youth."

Richard's speech had become rapid and imperative. Now he paused.

"Think of my father's death, for instance----" he said.

His narrow, black figure crouched together, Julius March knelt on one
knee before the fire. He held his thin hands outspread, so as to keep
the glow of the burning logs from his face. He was deeply moved,
debating a certain matter with himself.

"To all questions supremely worth having answered, there is no
answer--I take that for granted," the young man continued. "And yet one
is so made that it is impossible not to go on asking. I can't help
wanting to get at the root of this queer recurrence of accident, and
all the rest of it, which clings to my people. I can't help wanting to
make out whether there was any psychological moment which determined
the future, and started them definitely on the down-grade. What
happened--that's what I want to arrive at--what happened at that
moment? Had it any reasonable and legitimate connection with all which
has followed?"

As he held them outspread, between his face and the glowing fire,
Julius March's hands trembled. He found himself confronted by a
situation which he had long foreseen, long and earnestly prayed to
avoid. The responsibility was so great of either giving or withholding
the answer, as he knew it, to that question of Dickie's. A way of
rendering possible help opened before him. But it was a way beset with
difficulties, a way at once fantastic and coarsely realistic, a way
along which the sublime and the ridiculous jostled each other with
somewhat undignified closeness of association, a way demanding
childlike faith, not to say childish credulity, coupled with a great
fearlessness and self-abnegation before ever a man's steps could be
profitably set in it. If presented to Richard, would he not turn
angrily from it as an insult offered to his intellect and his breeding
alike? Indeed, the hope of effecting good showed